Speech by Rep. Tom Osborne (R-Nebraska), March 6, 2002

Speech by Rep. Tom Osborne (R-Nebraska), March 6, 2002

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, 6 weeks ago, I went with members of the Committee on Agriculture to Colombia. We were fortunate enough to have dinner one evening with President Pastrana at

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his version of Camp David, which is in Cartagena. During that evening, we were able to get well acquainted. He described his being kidnapped by guerillas a few years ago and all that he went through and the general lay of the land down there and his struggles with the FARC and the ELN and the AUC.
In the progress of that evening, what we learned is that there are roughly 600,000 acres of coca plants under cultivation in the country of Colombia. This allows them to provide roughly 90 percent of the cocaine that comes into the United States. As a result, FARC and these other vigilante groups are very well funded. I would imagine that their funding may exceed that of other legitimate enterprises within the country of Colombia. And so the people in Colombia have paid a great price.

Last year, we were told that 29,000 civilians lost their lives in this conflict. They are caught in between the various groups. In many cases, they have no place to go and no place to hide. As has been mentioned earlier, seven members of Congress have been killed in the last 4 years, and five lawmakers are currently hostages in that country.

So the present negotiations, or the negotiations that have gone on for the last 3 or 4 years, have broken down and now Colombia is basically under a reign of terror, where some of the things that we have seen around the world are now being perpetrated on the Colombian people. We have seen bridges blown up, water supplies such as in Bogota have been damaged and threatened.

So it appears at this time that the only solution is that the United States provide help. We already have provided quite a bit. But the big issue is helicopters, because the pilots that are doing the spraying of the coca to try to eliminate it are certainly under a great deal of duress.

So we need also some commitment from Colombia, but they need our aid.

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